C.O.N.S. 2014

- or Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Six -

Yes, that's Six with an 'i', as in
sixth time. The sixth CONS. Six years of dedication bordering on
madness. Six events with a steady climb in attendance numbers and
quality. Six get-togethers of Transformers fans from Germany, the
Netherlands, and many other countries, as well as an estimated six
million Euros changing hands in return for transforming plastic robots
these last six years. Okay, the six million might be pushing it a bit, I
admit. The rest of it, though?

To
satisfy the statistic freaks first: our upward trend remains intact.
It's not as steep as before, but we have still managed to set yet
another European attendance record for a one-day Transformers Fan
Convention with 538 visitors. And yes, even if some thought that
attendance numbers felt a bit less than last year's July event, the
final tally of sold tickets revealed that we had five more guests this
year than last. Sadly not six more, that would have fitted the theme of
this article really nicely, but you can't have everything, I guess.

And as has become tradition for these things - or so it seems - we began
with ill omens, just like last year. Again we had people from the
organisation team dropping out just days before the event. The weather
wasn't that nice, either. And for me personally the question of whether I
could attend was far from firmly answered, as I was down with a vicious
cold just one week prior. Fortunately I recovered in time.
Unfortunately I first managed to pass the bug on to my wife, who was
thus unable to attend this year. Thankfully my father-in-law Karl-Heinz
was able to substitute for her, making sure that the
Transformers-Universe.com booth was always manned. But as I said: quite a
few ill omens before the actual event. On the day, though, everything
went very smoothly. Okay, this was the sixth time, so you kind of expect
people to have gotten a hang of things by now. The organisation of the
contests and interviews was nearly flawless and the attendees, too, were
mostly familiar with how we did things by now and didn't need to be
individually briefed on where the toilets were and what this exotic
German cuisine called "Currywurst mit Pommes Rot-Weiß" was all about.

Our
special guests this year brought their massiv comic competence with
them. Artist Andrew Griffith and colorist John-Paul Bove from IDW
comics, two very nice guys, who are living the dream of having graduated
from mere Transformers fans to professional shapers of the franchise.
Brownie points to both of them for giving their best effort in
communicating with the natives in their own language to the best of
their abilities. Yes, German is a difficult language, I admit, but they
both get an A for effort. John-Paul and Andrew also gave us a hand
drawing the raffle numbers to award the many items our sponsors had
gifted us with this year. We had a few cool things in the raffle, such
as four unfolding coolers from Paramount, a giant Masterpiece Grimlock
from Actionfiguren24.de, and then there were quite a few comics from
Pannini. We're talking many, many comics here. A huge bucket load of
comics, to be precise. I'd go so far as to say there was a deluge of
comics. Maybe as much as six thousand comics even, or so it seemed at
least as we were handing them out. Suffice to say: a lot of comics. And
it seemed that most our raffle prizes this year went to the smallest
Transformers fan present, or at least the smallest one capable of
walking on her own two legs. Said fan was tiny, female, blonde, cute,
and dressed all in pink. And she insisted of always taking the long way
around the tables and through the thickest crowd of people, even on her
sixth run to the front to collect her prizes. Thankfully someone was on
hand to help her as she won one of the big coolers, because that might
otherwise have posed a bit of a problem for the little girl.

What
else is there to say? We did a bit of streamlining when it came to the
contests taking place, but what we lacked in number of contests, we made
up in participants. There was our cosplay contest with no less than a
dozen participants this year, handily won by Transformers Prime
Soundwave. And we also had a live-on-location kitbashing contest with
four people managing to finish their custom Transformers figures in time
for our jury - made up of our special guests - to decide on the lucky
winner. And since this much kitbashing is really hard, we fully
understand it if someone needs to take a bit of a nap afterwards, too.

Thus
we arrive in our sixth paragraph of this report of the sixth CONS for
the sixth conclusion. Was it a great event? It certainly was. Tiring?
Yep! With some hardships along the way? How else? And most importantly:
was it fun? You bet it was! For the sixth time a hearty thank you to
Lucy & Alex, who really came through for all of us the sixth year in
a row. Also many thanks to all the people who helped us on the day and
were always ready to lend a hand when needed. And maybe, just maybe, if
we can just manage to somewhat pave that bumpy road leading up to the
event, then I am fully certain that the CONS 2015 will be at least as
good as our Super Six here was.